The negotiation that followed heavily favored Ves.
In exchange for relinquishing most of his gear to be upgraded using Mr. Longhorn’s old gear, he granted Virtual Chief Levitt the right to claim full credit for any findings he made when studying them. It was up to him and his subordinates to maximize the amount of merits they could earn from submitting their findings.
Due to his strong bargaining power, Ves reversed the question of payment. Instead of him paying the armory some merits to perform a service, he actually browbeat the armory into paying him merits in advance for the ’privilege’ of studying his personal gear!
"Think of it as an investment." Ves grinned as he crossed his arms. "I’m sure that if I offered up my gear for study to the armories, they’ll certainly bid a lot of merits for the opportunity. If you don’t want this chance to slip through your virtual fingers, you better
At some points in the negotiation, Ves felt as if he was taking candy from a virtual baby. It wasn’t as if the virtual chief armorer lacked processing power. The problem lay in his programming. His core function was to assist the human armorers in performing their duties. Virtual Chief Levitt excelled in performing maintenance and doing simple repairs on various pieces of gears.
Horse trading didn’t appear to be the virtual individual’s strong suit. His programming didn’t avail him much in this area.
To Ves, hoodwinking an AI never felt better. While he didn’t consider himself to be an excellent negotiator, he at least possessed more experience in this area than an AI that languished in the same armory for three-thousand years without the ability to do or learn anything productive.
Halfway into the negotiation, Ves learned a very crucial fact.
Levitt couldn’t lie. The virtual chief armorer tried hard to present the facts in his favor, but Ves easily saw through the spin.
Ves believed he observed a critical clue. No matter how much the virtual officers attempted to imitate their human counterparts, their programming and personality matrices couldn’t possibly comprehend the illogical nature of humanity.
The CFA originally programmed these AIs to be the best assistants to the people who crewed the ship. They needed to be as reliable and helpful as possible to the officers or spacers who received the right to call upon their aid.
Deception and misdirection had never been a function of their digital makeup. In fact, their programmers must have tried to go the other way and made them as clear and truthful as possible to better assist the human crew of the Starlight Megalodon and other battleships!
Therefore, Ves suspected that aside from highly-developed AIs and the virtual officers from the Intelligence Department, every other AI completely lacked the capacity to lie! At best, they could lie by omission or simply refuse to say something, but as long as Ves asked the right question, he could still force out the right answer to make Levitt admit that he held back information.
Ves figured out another observation from this rule. Besides being unable to lie, they didn’t handle being lied to as well. Unless they possessed solid proof of his lies, Ves could easily get away with exaggerations, misrepresentations and misdirections.
He believed these advantages only grew stronger the stupider the AIs became. While Ves might have some scruples in front of someone with a decent chunk of processing power such as Virtual Commander Cosit, Virtual Chief Levitt ranked much lower in the totem pole and never achieved anything exceptional.
Ves basically scammed Levitt out of providing much more benefits than normal. Not only did Ves obtain everything from his wish list and more, he also convinced Levitt to pay him merits rather than the other way around!
"A pleasure doing business with you, Chief Levitt!" Ves shook the virtual officer’s hand. Amazingly, the physical projection accurately imitated the physical feedback of a handshake through his gauntlet. "As agreed, I’ll swing by a week to pick up my newly-refurbished gear."
Levitt smiled ruefully to the human who didn’t ever let go of the smallest benefits in the previous negotiation. Humans were so surprisingly dogged!
[Why do I feel I got the shorter end of the bargain?]
"Don’t worry too much about it, chief." Ves reassured the virtual baby. "The agreement we’ve made will surely earn you a tremendous amount of profit. The merits you’ve paid me is an investment which will practically double or triple your gains! You just have to work and be patient for a time. It’s not every day you’re able to get your hands on some stuff from the future!"
Like a used mech salesman, Ves practically bewitched the virtual chief. There was a big reason why AIs never engaged in negations. They were far too awful at it. Even if they’d been programmed for the job, an experienced human negotiator could easily pick out the flaws.
Ves left behind almost every piece of gear. He relinquished his C22 Earth Ant light combat armor, his supercharged signal jammer, his supercharged stealth detector, his spare ultracompact battery, his military-issued multiscanner, his spare laser pistol, the Cadisis, his other hidden backup knives, his Vandal officer-grade comm, his homebrew secure comm, his multitool and other small precision tools.
After wearing his C22 Earth Ant for months on end, Ves felt incredibly naked and vulnerable without its protective shell. The lack of gadgets and equipment he accumulated over time further increased his sense of vulnerability.
Still, Ves knew that at their current state and technology level, all of his fancy gear didn’t mean anything in the face of the Starlight Megalodon’s awesome might. Even a single anti-boarding turret installed in each and every corridor and compartment could blast a hole through his Earth Ant in a matter of milliseconds.
If the entire battleship ever turned hostile to him, he had no chance of survival no matter how much equipment he carried.
This was why he risked separating with his current gear and chose to leave them all in Levitt’s hands. He forced a promise from the virtual chief to upgrade or replace all of his existing gear.
While this still didn’t elevate him to a point where he could resist the Starlight Megalodon as a whole, it should be more than sufficient to repel any tricks the Vesians might want to pull on him. They remained his real enemy, and it was not out of the question for them to attempt to kill Ves.
Of course, the downside was that Ves temporarily gave up everything he carried and what he found in Mr. Longhorn’s cabin. The only gear he held onto was his CFA comm, which he wasn’t allowed to remove.
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